Letter to my nephew...

Oh, sweet child.

I was surprised at my own reaction to knowing you were alive. 

Don’t tell your mom. 

She was whisked away so quickly. I was hiding outside her door, listening to serious words said by serious doctors, worried for your tiny heart inside her belly. Your dad was calm. Because that’s how he’s made. But it was not a moment to be calm. So they made some quick, hard choices, and off your mom went to be cut in half to bring you into this world.

She was whisked away, and my hiding was found, so I had to retreat again to the waiting room. But I don’t like to wait. And I was worried for you. So my friend came to join us and when she said she could find out if you were here yet by looking at the computer, I told her to do it. 

She said you were a boy, and inexplicable tears appeared down my face. You were real. 

And then we waited. And waited. And waited. While the doctors did what they do. And your mom and dad spent your first minutes loving you. 

When I couldn’t take it anymore, I finally ventured down the hall uninvited. I found a nurse cleaning your tiny body while you scrunched your face, resisting the new sensation of air. And I sobbed. You were so perfect. I knew you would be. Your mom was okay. I knew she would be. But my heart was still broken, and the love and joy and gladness I felt simply because you existed was too much for my head to process. So it exploded in tears. 

It’s the heartbreak I want to tell you something about. 

It’s about your grandma. 

She loved you, without ever knowing you, and the thought that you might grow to not know the enormity of her love is just awful. 

So I’ve been thinking about what I might tell you about her. How I might teach you of her magnificence. She was no ordinary grandma. And you should know that. You are the descendent of the best who ever was. 

She wasn’t the “best” in the way the world judges humans. She never went to college. She didn’t win any trophies. There were never certificates on her wall. That was part of what made her the best. She taught, by the way she lived, that glory was not the goal. That the spotlight is pointless if you stand in it alone. There will be no room for certificates, if your walls are filled with photos of family and friends. And that, dear child, that is what matters. 

She did small things, with an incredible amount of love. So much love, that sometimes it drove your mom and uncle and I a little crazy. She’d stay up late gluing glitter to her posters she’d use to cheer for them. She’d spend what little money she had on trinkets for friends who needed a cheering up. She’d comment on every single thing we put on social media, encouraging with gooey, embarrassing words. Small things, with such love that they changed people. 

She would not have been able to buy you your first guitar, or register you for the team you want to play on. But she would have listened to every note you ever play. And would have embarrassed you with cheering at every game.

And at the same time, her great love wasn’t artificial. 

It was honest. And would sometimes sting. 

She’d tell you when you could do better, and she’d be right, and it would be infuriating. 

She’d tell you when to suck it up. And when to push harder. And when your room looked like a trash heap. 

And this great love held in great honestly made her the best. It made me better. It let us all live with the assurance that we’d never be alone, and never get too far off track. And when you can live in that assurance, you can do anything. 

Her great love led her to do some crazy things. 

And so the house your mom and I grew up in was often the home of squirrels, or baby raccoons, or other kids who didn’t have a mom like her. She nursed wild animals with kittens milk, and things that shouldn’t have lived still run around in that front yard. No creature was outside her ability to care. 

She used to wish she had gone to college, and had become a vet. But the truth is, that would have been too small of an occupation for her. Her care extended to all God’s creatures, but it was bigger than just the creatures. 

So she did ordinary, not-so-fancy jobs. She worked at a store the whole town would walk through every week. When she had to field complaints, she nodded in honest knowing, acknowledging the complainers had complicated lives and the least she could do was hear them. When her bosses made her run around in the rain and chase down carts despite her fragile health, she did it, because if she didn’t one of her colleagues would have to. When a woman was caught shoplifting with two children in tow, do you know what your grandma did? She took those children on a shopping spree of the toy department that she couldn’t afford, and threw them a party in the break room so they wouldn’t have to remember the night their mom went to jail as a bad one. 

Here’s the funny thing, that job was a terrible job. The hours were long. The pay was bad. But she did it without complaining, because she couldn’t help but love the people. 

And the people who knew her were changed by that. Her colleagues were kinder to customers, because she was. They treated each other more gently, because she did. And when her health began to fail her, child I’m not even kidding, we couldn’t get these people out of our house. They came with gifts and food and would have moved right in to care for her if we let them. They pulled trinkets out of their pockets she had given them in their own hard journeys. They retold stories of how she showed up for them when no one else had. 

That’s just what she did. That’s why she was the best. 

When she got this new job, we were so glad. The hours were better. The pay was fair. But I don’t think those who hired her knew exactly what they were getting. 

She was just supposed to sit at a front desk and tell people where to go. Answer the phone and field the questions. 

But that’s not what she did. It’s not who she was.

So she loved the people. She learned their names, and joked with their friends. She warned rowdy kids in such a way they didn’t want to be rowdy anymore, and made people who had been breaking rules not want to break them. 

They kept changing her job title because it’s hard to put words on what she did. On who she was. Because she was the best. 

I speak of these two particular jobs she held, because it was easiest to see her brilliance in the midst of strangers who didn’t know her love already. Before she did these, she ran your grandpa’s studio. He was the artist. She was the manager. He would tell you, she’s the reason he had a business at all.

She sold photos for all those years, not because she cared about making the money, but because she believed in photographs. She believed in good photos of families together, of smiling faces that could be frozen in image and put onto walls, so that no matter what happened people could remember their joy. She would cry with mere acquaintances, when they’d inevitably come in looking for a photo of a grandfather who passed unexpectedly, grateful to have a memory preserved for all of time. She would squeal with people the rest of town didn’t even like, as their senior photos returned flawlessly. She could point out previously hated freckles in ways that made the bearer feel beautiful, and make mention of wrinkles in ways that made the aging feel grateful. 

But before even that, she was just our mom. And she loved us so much she would have done anything we ever needed. Anything we ever wanted. Not because we were spoiled (though that could be claimed) but because we were loved. And she was the best at loving. And when you saw her love, you just wanted to love more too.

There’s so much more I could tell you about your grandma, child. So much more that is worth your knowing. But I tell you what I have, because if you ever wonder in this world if you are loved, and if that love is real enough to be honest with you, to journey with you and hold you close, I want you to remember that you are the descendent of the best woman who has ever lived. She loved you without ever knowing you, and would delight in your every move. Your mom, uncle and I will do our best to love you that way, for it’s how she made us. But the love that she lived with already exists in your bones. It is what you are made of too.